Author Archives: Jordan E. Rosenfeld

Launching Into Scenes with Action

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All great novels and stories start out with a mere idea. Maybe it’s a large idea that spans centuries and crosses continents, like Patrick Rothfuss’s first book in The Kingkiller Chronicles series, The Name of the Wind; or maybe it’s magic realism manifest into stories, like Aimee Bender’s books. No matter...

10 Ways to Launch Strong Scenes

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Any story or novel is, in essence, a series of scenes strung together like beads on a wire, with narrative summary adding texture and color between. A work of fiction will comprise many scenes, and each one of these individual scenes must be built with a structure most easily described as...

WD Profile: Amy Bloom

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From prose to screenwriting and back again—here’s what short-story writer and novelist Amy Bloom learned from moving between prose writing and the all-show, no-tell world of screenwriting.

by Jordan E. Rosenfeld

Media Watchdog:
Brent Cunningham

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Brent Cunningham, Columbia Journalism Review’s managing editor, came to the magazine in 1999 on a fellowship and was convinced to stay on as managing editor. Founded in 1961, the magazine’s mission is to serve as “both a watchdog and a friend of the press in all its forms” and “encourage and...

A Published Prosecutor

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In his 13 years as a lawyer, Raffi Yessayan, a Boston native, has worked as a prosecutor for the district attorney and served as chief of the Gang Unit. But no challenge has been quite as exhilarating for this debut author as writing his first thriller, Eight in the Box, about...

The Power of Persistence

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The characters in David J. Schwartz’s debut novel, Superpowers, wake up overnight with super speed, super strength, invisibility, the power to read minds and the ability to fly. The author, however, had the power of persistence on his side. From the day he started writing the manuscript to its publication, six...

Moving with the Trends

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Before Stephanie Kip Rostan was a literary agent at the Greenberg Literary Agency, where she’s been since September 2001, she spent four years as an editor for The Bantam Dell Publishing Group. An avid reader with diverse tastes, Rostan worked on fiction and nonfiction projects as an editor, enabling her to...

On The Edge: Boomer Lit

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It's difficult to imagine that those 1960s doe-eyed children who brought the world’s attention to Vietnam War protests and love-ins are old enough to qualify as senior citizens. But they’ve finally matured—and so has the fiction being written by and for them.

By Jordan E. Rosenfeld

Literary Hot Spots: San Francisco

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Want to know where all the literary hot spots are in bay area? We've got you covered. This is part two of your essential guide to living the lit life in several U.S. destinations, including Boston, San Francisco, New York City, Miami, Seattle and more.

by Jordan E....

The WD Interview: Sara Gruen

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It’s hard to say which came first for author Sara Gruen—the animals or the writing, both of which have been in her life for as long as she can remember. While she spends much of the time in her North Carolina home with a menagerie of real animals (not to mention...

Shades of Gray

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Do you still have first-time rights to your work if it's been printed in blogs, e-zines or tiny defunct journals? Well, the rules aren't so black and white any more.

On the Edge: Fantastic Fiction

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Despite the longevity of the fantastic in narrative form, there's long been a stigma against blending it with literary fiction. But recently, readers have been eager to read contemporary fantastic literature—and publishers are taking note.